James Drogan

For some time I have wanted to post about "kleio’s belly," but have struggled with how to say what I want to say (most unusual for me).  The reasons for this may become apparent a bit later.

I have always admired those who excel at their craft, be it what most of us call work or be it what most of us do simply for personal enjoyment.  Sometimes I don't fully understand the craft.  Much of what's in "kleio’s belly is like this.  Much of what I hear and see in "TED Talks" is like this.  Apparently complete understanding is not necessarily required for complete appreciation.

December 6, 2008, saw the arrival of "kleio’s belly" on the blog scene with an opening post of "yet another craftblog..."  While the blog is about crafts, it is far more rich than that (cf."americana 101: rollerderby").  It is a delightful, funny, poignant, very well-written romp through through a wide swath of a person's life.  It's not a tell-all, but it is a tell-a-lot.

Craftsmanship, of course, abounds.  From food to photographs; from writing to wondering and wandering; from artifacts of childhood to the artifacts of adulthood.

"kleio’s belly" is in my feeds and almost every day it brings a surprise, a bit of elixir in the otherwise humdrum of the daily routine.  I laugh and sometimes wipe away a tear at a revived memory.

And the force behind this is my daughter whom I love very much.

It's been some time since I have cited Dave Pollard.  This morning brings Friday Flashback: Ten Parameters for 21st Century Innovation.

I am especially attracted to the graphic accompanying Pollard's post.  It compliments what I try to impart to my students regarding critical thinking. 

The entire post, which I commend to your reading and thought, touches upon the issue of ethics. 

The post is also an excellent example of high quality communication.

I'm reminded of the last stanza in Robert Frost's "Miles to Go Before I Sleep."

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

All of us have work to do.  Pollard gives us some suggestions for completing that work.

Those of you in my courses retain, hopefully, some memory of The Context of Interest.  One of the major external business drivers is labeled Socio-Political-Economic.

George Friedman, author of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, made a presentation (followed by questions and answers) to the Carnegie Council in New York City.  His remarks deal directly with this driver and are recommended for your consideration.

For the last 10 or so years "interaction costs" have been on my mind.  At first ("Business Intelligence: Potential Impact in Railway Freight Transportation," June 11, 1999) the phrase was confined to the interface between a railroad and its customer.  Subsequently, however, I see as the costs of interaction between all nodes in the context of interest.

My hypothesis is that as the complexity of a structure increases the complexity of the interactions, and hence the associated costs, also increases.  So much so, in fact, that growing interaction costs can cause the  structure to collapse.

In "Simplicity: The Next Big Thing," Rosabeth Moss Kanter seems to be on the same line of thinking.  She discusses the need for simplicity.    This brings to mind the question of what happens when you remove complexity from a structure.  Does it simply -- poof -- vanish?  Or, as I suspect, is it displaced somewhere else.  Much like the old practice in logistics of pushing inventory upstream, an illusion of progress.

Entropy is a measure of disorder in a system.  Few, I suspect, would dispute the assertion that the entropy in the system of the world (thank you, Neil Stephenson) continues to grow as the complexity of the system grows.

We may simplify in a local region of the system, but, like moving inventory upstream, we're not really improving the overall performance.

When we simplify we need to understand the knock-on effects.

The title of this post is taken from Ellet, William. The Case Study Handbook : How to Read, Discuss, and Write Persuasively About Cases. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2007, 978-1-4221-0158-2.

Cases have a particular meaning in the American education scheme; multiple page descriptions of situations that cause students to read, analyze, draw conclusions, and express the results of their efforts.

After reading the text, however, I believe it has applicability to much more than case work.  The suggestions made by Ellet are appropriate for reviewing and commenting on far less expansive source material such as classroom and online discussions.  Ellet's recommendations are very complementary to the fact-based hypothesis-driven thinking I discuss in Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Communications.

It matters little what one knows (as I have said before) if one cannot use that knowledge to think appropriately about situations requiring resolution, and to then express the results of that thinking a relevant and clear manner.

Ellet can help.

For some time (see Forces) I have been giving consideration to the matter of change as characterized in the title of this post.  In Managing the Business, a follow-on to Forces, I speculate a bit more on how one can safely ride the turbulence.

This morning, from The BNET Report, comes Constant Disruption: The New Reality?.

"In the past, economic stabilization has always followed periods of major upheaval like recessions, wars, energy crises, assassinations. But a few Harvard professors believe this time may be different."

The link leads one to a post on The View from Harvard Business titled "The Mother of All Disruptions." 

This post leads one to thinking on this matter by  John Hagel III, John Seely Brown (JSB), and Lang Davison, three well-respected observers and commentators on the world and its complexity.

Albert Einstein reminded us, "You cannot solve a problem with the same type of thinking that is creating it."

The argument being advanced here is for new thinking leading to new institutions and new ways of riding the wave of change.

For those of us in education that pursue the development of the new generation of wave riders it means that we need to also think in new ways.

"We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others."  Blaise Pascal via Quotes of the Day.